Did You Know? The Default Microsoft Outlook Contact Pic Was Bill Gates’ Mug Shot

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Bill Gates no longer holds an active role within Microsoft, but customers who haven’t updated to the latest version of the Office productivity suite might actually see the face of the company founder on a regular basis.

Few people know this, but Bill Gates is staring at users every time they launch Outlook 2010, as Microsoft used his silhouette for the default contact picture coming within the app.

Let’s take one thing at a time to explain how exactly this happened.

First and foremost, Outlook 2010. This version of the email client came with a feature called People Pane whose purpose was pretty straightforward, as you could easily guess by simply reading its name.

People Pane in Outlook 2010
The People Pane was more of a contact hub that included all the information about users sending your emails, and everything was grouped in a single UI. For example, clicking on a contact displayed the emails that you received, as well as appointments, contact data, social network details and much more.



Outlook 2010 People Pane


Basically, the People Pane was supposed to make contact management a smoother process, as it brought all the information on a specific person in just one place.

Even though in 2010 social networks weren’t as advanced as they are today, Microsoft integrated supported for services like Facebook, allowing the People Pane to automatically retrieve profile picture should Facebook account information be available for your contacts. In other words, if one of your contacts was already on Facebook and you saved his account in the People Pane, Outlook 2010 was able to retrieve their profile photo and use it inside the app.

When no social network data was available, the People Pane displayed a placeholder image that looked like a man’s silhouette, just like many other services used to do shortly after that.

But in the case of Outlook 2010, it was actually Microsoft founder Bill Gates the one whose silhouette was used for the generic photo. And it’s not just a typical photo of Bill Gates, but the mug shot that he got after being arrested back in 1977.



Bill Gates' mug shot

Bill Gates arrested and a smile in the mug shot
As weird as it may sound, yes, Bill Gates was arrested for reckless driving in New Mexico in 1977, so the police took his mug shot for their records. The young Gates was caught not only speeding in his Porsche but also running a stop sign and - drum roll - driving without a license. He was eventually arrested, but released shortly after that, though very little details are known about this.

On the other hand, this wasn’t the first time Bill Gates was arrested, as it’s believed he was involved in a similar driving incident two years before.

Getting back to the Gates mug shot being used as the generic profile picture in Outlook 2010, Ars discovered that the silhouettes in the two photos are a perfect match. No confirmation from Microsoft has ever been offered on this, despite the obvious evidence that seems to indicate this is the case.





Since then, Microsoft has switched to other generic photos for its apps, so Outlook 2010 was the only version that featured Bill Gates’ mug shot for the People Pane. In Windows 10, for instance, the Mail app uses a generic circle that shows the sender’s initials, instead of a silhouette created using some employee’s photo.

As for Bill Gates himself, he continues to be one of the richest people in the world with a net worth close to $91 billion. There are all kinds of crazy estimates based on his net worth, including figures showing that Gates makes more than $240 million every day

He was arrested and was smiling. Thats how you become a billionaire